As database professionals, we’re all aware of the importance of backups. We make sure the backup process runs as expected, and (hopefully) we restore a backup every now and then to test if the restore process works. But what about source control for your scripts? Most of us don’t use source control in our daily job. But source control is a much a part of the backup process as the actual database backups.

So looking for an easy way out, I focused on Visual Studio Online (VS Online). This is a free online source control system, that you can use once you created an account. You can login on the website with your Microsoft Live account, enter some information (like a username, etc), and you’re ready to go!

But how do you go from writing a query in SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS), to checking in your .sql code files into VS Online? Let’s take a look.

Installing TFS tools
In order to use VS Online, you need to install some extra things on your machine. The first thing you need to download is the “Team Explorer for Microsoft Visual Studio 2013”. This installs the team explorer, that you need to get things from and check thing into VS online. This install requires a reboot, so please take that into account!

For this installation, it’s important that you download the right version. If you’re running the 32-bit version of SSMS, you need to download the 32-bit version of the provider. If you install the 64-bit version, it won’t work (and trust me on this, I’ve made that mistake before!).

VS Online
At this point, I’m assuming you have an account for VS Online. If you log in to the website, and you go to your account url ([AccountName].visualstudio.com), you see the “Create your first team project” page. On this page, you need to create a project before you can check in any files:

Configure source control in SSMS
The next step is to configure SSMS, to use the source control provider you just installed. After the installation, you get a new menu in SSMS for source control:

In this menu, click on “Open from Source Control”. In the window that opens, click “Servers…”:

Click “Add…” to add a TFS server or URL:

Now you need to enter your account URL in the textbox:

Once you’ve done that a login screen pops up. Log in with your Microsoft Live account (the same you used to create your VS Online profile), and you’re authenticated:

At this point, your source control is added, and you’ll see it in the overview screen:

If you close the windows that are shown, you end up in your source control project overview:

Now that you have a project, it might be handy to show what’s in the solution (if you don’t have that on your screen already). You can open the “Solution Explorer” by clicking on View => Solution Explorer (or Ctrl+Alt+L).

Checking in your solution
If you want to check-in your solution or project, you can right-click it in the Solution Explorer, and choose “Add Solution to Source Control”:

Another way of doing it, is by clicking on File => Source Control => Add Solution to Source Control. In the next window you are asked for the source control server (click okay if your VS Online URL is selected), and you see the project explorer:

Click on “MySQLProject”, and click OK. Now the check-in screen pops up, where you can “tag” your check-in:

Congratulation! You just checked in your first code in VS Online!

Pitfalls and difficulties
In all honesty, there are some downsides in using this, but those are mainly issues in SSMS. For example, you can’t create folders in your SQL Script project. You have to work with the default “Queries” folder you get by default. So there’s no chance you can add a “Finance”, “Maintenance” or “DBA” folder to your project for example.

A work-around for this is creating multiple projects in the solution. So you’ll end up with 3 projects in 1 solution. The nice thing is that you can check-in or check-out 1 single project in your solution, or you can just work on the entire solution at once. This gives you the possibility to work on the solution on your own, or with a group of people.

Another pitfall is the process. If you’re not used to working with queries in source control, it’s easy to forget to check-in your changes at the end of the day. But that’s just something you need to get used to, and need to deal with in your own way. If you’d like to check-in multiple times a day, go ahead and do that. Do you want to check-in your changes at the end of the day only, it’s fine as well.

Conclusion
Using source control is great, especially when you have a lot of scripts you need to maintain. I’ve tried to create zip-archives, version numbering my .sql files, different directories, etc. But there’s always a moment that you forget to save your script in an archive, or your computer crashes, and all your work is gone. Using source control prevents these issues (if you use it as intended of course!). VS Online is a really good source control platform (it’s basically TFS online), and it’s free for use. One of the mayor advantages is that VS Online / TFS is fully compatible with SSMS and Visual Studio (which you both use as database professional).

Are you still skeptical? Maybe you should just try it out for a week, to see if it helps you in your daily job. And you know what, maybe you’ll like it. And even better: maybe it’ll someday save your life!

Every data professional out there will run into slow running queries, or performance issues you can’t explain at some point. At that moment, it’s difficult to explain the problem without looking at an execution plan. SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS) has build-in functionality to look at these execution plans. But this isn’t always as useful as we would like it to be. But there is a great free tool that’ll help you with query-tuning and pinpointing the issue in bad performing queries.

Download
SQL Sentry Plan Explorer is free, and available on the website of SQL Sentry. Even though it says it’s a trial version, it won’t expire after a certain period. The only thing that’s “trial” in this version, is that some functionality is blocked in the free version. But all the good stuff is available in the free version.

Integration in SSMS
When you start the install, the install doesn’t ask you to shut down SSMS. But I recommend you do. If you don’t close SSMS, you won’t see the SSMS add-in menu. It will show after the setup is finished, and you start a new instance of SSMS.

Creating a query, and opening it in Plan Explorer
As an example, I’ve created a really bad query on the Adventureworks2012 database:

If you run this query in SSMS, and you include the actual execution plan (Ctrl + M), it will show you the execution plan in a separate result window. In this window, you’ll have the option to right-click, and choose “View with SQL Sentry Plan Explorer”:

If you click this, you’ll open Plan Explorer, and it will show you the execution plan:

So, is that all?
I can almost hear you think: So what’s the difference between Plan Explorer and the default SSMS windows, besides the fancy colors? Just take a look at all the extra opportunities you get with Plan Explorer. For example, how does your join diagram look? Can you pull that from SSMS? No? Well I can do that with Plan Explorer:

Your most expensive operation in the query? Yes, you could do that by looking at the percentages shown in your queryplan. But can you show me why they are that expensive? Again, I can do that with Plan Explorer:

Can you do you job without it?
If I ask myself this question, I think I can honestly answer this with: yes. Yes, I can do my job without it. But this makes it SO much easier to pinpoint the problem, and to get a quick overview of the query performance. Normally I look at the queryplan in SSMS first, and then immediately open up a Plan Explorer window, to take a closer look at the problems.

So if you write queries on a daily basis, and you’re responsible for, or interested in, qery performance: download it today, and try it out yourself. I’ll promise you, you won’t regret downloading it!
If you want to read more about SQL Sentry Plan Explorer, don’t forget to check out these blog posts:

Since 1999, Red Gate Software has produced ingeniously simple and effective tools for over 500,000 technology professionals worldwide. From their HQ in Cambridge UK, they create a number of great tools for MS SQL Server, .NET, and Oracle. The philosophy of Red Gate is to design highly usable, reliable tools that solve the problems of DBAs and developers.

Every year Red Gate selects a number of active and influential community members (such as popular blog writers and community site owners) as well as SQL and .NET MVPs who are experts in their respective fields, to be part of the Friends of Red Gate (FORG) program. I’m proud to announce that I’m part of the 2014 FORG selection. This post is a part of a series of post, in which I try to explain and show you why the tools of Red Gate are so loved by the community.

What SSMS misses
The tool that Microsoft provides you with when you install SQL Server is pretty nice. It’s nicely designed (even though I’ve heard other opinions), it’s stable, and it does what it should do: it allows you to administer your servers. But that’s not the only thing that it should do in my opinion. If you take a look at Visual Studio as an example, that studio contains more options that helps developers do their job. And remember, SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS) is actually a Visual Studio instance with a different layout (just check the Ssms.exe.config)…

So why doesn’t SSMS have a schema compare option, like Visual Studio has? Visual Studio is no longer the environment that is used only by developers that work with ASP.NET and C#, but it evolved to much more the last few years. It’s now the tool for working with Data Quality Services (DQS) and SQL Server Integration Services (SSIS). So let’s talk about some other features that SSMS misses in my opinion, and let’s see how SQL Prompt can fill that gap.

IntelliSense
SSMS ships with a default intelliSense, but this isn’t an implementation that I would like to see. It misses a few vital features. For example, the fact that SSMS IntelliSense doesn’t take relations between objects into account, is one of the biggest shortcomings. One of the companies that created a tool to fix that is Red Gate. If you install SQL Prompt, you get IntelliSense 2.0, or IntelliSense on steroids if you like.

When you installed SQL Prompt, it gives you suggestions when you write a JOIN clause. This means that it scans column names, and traces primary- and foreign key relationships on the tables you are joining. The join suggestion based on keys can be recognized by the little key symbol in front of it:

Object discovery
Whenever you’re working in a database, and you’re writing your queries, there comes a point that you can’t remember a column name or datatype. In SSMS you need to navigate the object explorer to the object (let’s say a table), and generate a create script, or click on the table to get to the column list. SQL Prompt allows you to hover your mouse over an object, and see some extra information:

If you click on the popup, you’ll get another popup window with the creation script (by default), or a summary of the object:

Scripting options
Whenever you need to script an object, or want to see the contents of for example a Stored Procedure, you need to navigate to the object in your object explorer. With SQL Prompt, you can also use the mouse context menu to script objects. Just right-click an object you referenced in your query, and choose the “Script Object as ALTER” option:

This will generate an alter script for the object you selected. This makes it a lot easier to see the contents of a Stored Procedure or View, and change it when needed.

Useful functions
The last feature I want to show you is the menu of SQL Prompt. This shows you another set of useful tools and functions. For example, how do you format your T-SQL query? SQL Prompt can do that for you with a few mouse clicks, or if you press the hotkey combination. Another great feature is the “Find Unused Variables and Parameters”. This saves you time when you try to find out which declared variables you don’t use anymore, in a very large query. All of these options can be found in the SQL Prompt menu:

If you want, you can also create a style-export for all your colleagues, so your entire department or company formats queries according to the same layout. You can find out more about this in the SQL Prompt menu, under Options -> Format -> Styles. You can export your formatting options as a .sqlpromptstyle file, or import one.

Is it worth it?
If you would ask me, my answer would be: yes! Even though it’ll cost you about €285,- (or $390,-), it’s definitely worth it. It saves you a lot of time, and it adds a lot of useful (and needed) features to SSMS.

If you want to try it out, just go to Red-Gate.com, or the product site for SQL Prompt. You can download a trial there that contains all features, for a limited time.

If you want to read more about this topic, don’t forget to check out these blog posts:

I still can get enthusiastic when I discover tiny new features of SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS). It’s the tool that I use every day, but still I discover new and cool things to use, that I never noticed before.

Filter Object Explorer
If you look at the Object Explorer, you’ll see a little button that can come in quite handy: the filter button:

This allows you to filter the results in Object Explorer. If you click on it, you will see the filter window pop up:

Just as a test, I filtered my object on name contains “Test”. This will filter only the database and object type you selected. In my case, I selected the Table-node, and it will filter only these objects:

There are a few drawbacks on this. One of them is that you can’t remove the filter without opening the filter pop-up again. Another one is you only filter results once. If you want to adjust your filter, you need to remove it completely, and reapply your new filter.

Scripting Magic
One of the things I use on a regular basis is the “Generate and Publish Scripts” wizard. But did you know this wizard had some hidden gems? One of the options you have, it to script objects to individual files. That’s an option that is hidden in plain sight:

But another gem is hidden behind the Advanced button:

This allows you to generate insert scripts for you tables, without the use of a 3rd party tool.

In the picture above you see the same stored procedure (in this case from the AdventureWorks 2012 database), split in 2 by the splitter bar. This makes it for example easier to look at the declare statements in the top of the script, and the query your working on in the bottom of the script.

Tab Groups
The last one is one I use on a regular basis. At the past few employers, I’ve worked with 2 monitors. This makes it easy to compare files or result sets. But what if you don’t have that luxury? There’s an option in SSMS to create a new tab group. Just right-click a query tab, and choose the option you like:

Let’s say you want to compare the resultsets of 2 queries, you can use the Horizontal Tab Group option:

To return to your normal view, just right-click on the tab again, and click “Move to Previous Tab Group”.

Save time
One of the things Mickey Stuewe (Blog | @SQLMickey) pointed out, is that you can rearrange the columns in the result window of SSMS. Just drag and drop columns the way you like. It could save you a lot of time rerunning the query to change the order of your columns. The order of the columns is reset the next time you run the query.

Never stop learning!
There are plenty more hidden gems in SSMS, waiting to be found by you. So never stop learning, and always try to take it a step further than needed. You’ll be surprised to see what awaits you…

Last month I started my first real DBA job. Until then I only had “accidental DBA” experience, and I’m glad I got the opportunity to prove myself as a real full time DBA.

As a SQL Server developer you and I both know that using the right tools can be a lifesaver. But my first weeks as DBA gave me the feeling this is more important than ever before. Having the right tools can save you a lot of time, and can actually help you make time for the important stuff. In this blog I’ll try to show you which tools I use nowadays, and the reason why you should use them as well.

SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS) for SQL Server 2012
If you’re working with SQL Server, you’ll need a version of SSMS (3rd party tools excluded). My first experience was with SQL Server 2000, and back then the “Enterpise Manager” and “Query Analyzer” were a drama to work with. If you look at the last version of the SSMS that is shipped with SQL Server 2012, then you’ll see that SSMS has come a long way!

Because I’m administering SQL Server 2008R2, I can’t use SSMS 2012 for everything, but it’s still my main tool. Just because of the performance enhancements, and the Visual Studio look and feel.

You can download the studio as a separate installation from this location.

SSMSBoost
One of my favorite SSMS add-ins is SSMSBoost. This allows you to quickly create and use snippets in your SSMS, script data with a few clicks, and quickly find objects in your databases.

SSMSBoost won the Bronze Community award for “Best Database Development Product” 2012, so I’m not the only one who appreciates this add-in! You can download the tool from their website. After the installation, you can request a free community license on the website.

sp_Blitz
If you take over a server as DBA, there’s only one way to determine the health of that server: sp_Blitz! This script, build by Brent Ozar’s company “Brent Ozar Unlimited” (Website | @BrentOzarULTD ), gives you a full overview of the “health status” of your SQL Server.

This also gives you a list of items you might want to fix, in order to ensure a stable and maintainable environment. The items are sorted based on importance, so you know which items you need to fix first. An excellent start for every new environment!

sp_WhoIsActive
If you start out as a DBA it’s hard to find a good point to start from. What do you want to fix first? Your users keep complaining that they’re queries are running slow, your manager wants more and more performance from the same hardware without any real hardware changes, etc. A good point to start from is finding our which slow running queries and stored procedures your users are executing.

sp_WhoIsActive, written by Adam Machanic (Blog | @AdamMachanic ), gives you the ability to quickly gather this information, without any hassle. Once you’ve deployed the stored procedure to your machine, you can start using it to pinpoint issues on your SQL Server.

SQLjobvis
The last hurdle I needed to take, is to find out which SQL Server Agent Jobs were running on our environment, and at which time. Because I didn’t want to document this manually, I tried to find a tool that did this for me. Then I came across SQLjobvis.

SQLjobvis, written by SQLsoft (Website), is a free tool that visualizes the jobs on your SQL Server. It shows you all jobs and the result of the execution. You can select the data you want to see by date, and with color codes it shows the result within the date range you set.

SQL Sentry Plan Explorer, written by SQL Sentry Inc. (Website), is a lightweight standalone app that helps you analyse execution plans. By making it more graphical than the default execution plan viewer in SSMS, it’s easier to spot the bottleneck.

You can download the tool from this location. And don’t forget to install the SSMS add-in, so you can directly view your execution plan in the SQL Sentry Plan Explorer from SSMS, when you right-click your execution plan.

What tools do you use?
There are many more DBA’s out there, and every DBA has it’s own toolbelt. So I’d like to know which tools do YOU use to get the job done? Let me now by leaving a comment, or contact me by Twitter or mail, and I’ll add it to the list of must-haves!

As I told you in a few of my previous blogposts, I try to follow the #SQLHelp hashtag / topic. And two weeks ago, I could help another colleague via this communication channel.

When SQL Server 2012 RTM came out, I installed it as quick as possible. Just to try it out, and to see what the differences were compared to the other version I installed on my machine: SQL Server 2008. When using SQL Server Management Studio 2012, I encountered random freezes of SSMS. The freezes didn’t occur every time I opened a menu, or started a wizard or something. So it was a problem with my installation.

After a while, I remembered that the installations of SQL Server 2005 and 2008 had the same issue. These SSMS installations also froze, because they shared some dll’s with Visual Studio. So the issues I had now, might have the same cause. And eventually I re-applied Visual Studio SP1, and this solved the issue for me.

And after a few weeks, I saw a similar question from Samson J. Loo (Blog | @ayesamson) coming by, using the #SQLHelp hashtag:

@DevJef well I haven’t experienced any lockups with SSMS 2012 since reapplying VS2010 SP1. Thanks!! ‪#sqlhelp

So I was glad I could help him out, and happy he actually got back to me about resolving the issues. So thank you for that Samson! And for the rest of the community, I hope I helped you with writing this post!